I’d like to talk for a few minutes about food.
I come from the South where food is important.
Just the thought of old-fashioned, southern, country-cooking
makes my mouth water.
I grew up watching my mother and grandmothers cook.
Some of my favorite memories of my childhood are sitting on
the counter in my Granny’s kitchen watching her roll out the dough for her
famous biscuits. I can still picture her in that red and white striped apron,
always in a church dress and pearls no matter what time of the day or what day
of the week you saw her. She inevitably had some flour dusted on her cheek and
she would be humming a hymn as she floated about her kitchen. It was
intoxicating to watch.
Many years later when I was an adult, although I aspired to
be like my fore-mothers in the kitchen, I just didn’t have the time.
Saturday morning was pretty much the only time I had in the
week to whip out my pots and pans that, for the most part, sat unused.
Oh, I loved to cook. In fact I had shelves and shelves of
cookbooks – some were gifts, but my favorite ones were the books bought at
garage sales. I had a few that belonged to the infamous Mary Francis Watts and
I loved reading her notes in the margin for how to adjust a recipe a smidge
here or there or which recipes her children and grandchildren preferred.
Prior to moving overseas, I was a little nervous because I
knew that one of my main responsibilities would be cooking for our family. I
had heard rumors that the only way to buy chicken here was still clucking and I
would have to literally kill the chicken, pluck it, etc. Thankfully it’s not as
bad as that.
But it is different.
Living in a third-world country, you’ll not find a Walmart
or a Winn Dixie anywhere. In our country there’s not a single, American fast food
chain. There’s just no semblance of Western culture to be found and trying to
cook the food my husband and children are used to from the States is quite a
challenge.
There’s no processed or pre-packaged foods, and while it is
surely much healthier pretty much everything has to be made from scratch. For
instance, if a recipe calls for sour cream, I have to make that using real
cream and vinegar or lemon juice. (Same thing for buttermilk.)
We do live above a small grocery store where we can buy meat
and rice and coffee among other items, which is very convenient. I remember,
though, when my parents visited earlier this year, my mom could not even walk
into the store without getting nauseous. The sights and smells do take a little
while to get used to.
But as the country where we live has slowly begun to open up
after American embargoes were lifted, we’re actually now beginning to see
imported items arrive from time to time.
We’re able to get Campbell’s cream of chicken and mushroom
soups pretty regularly. We can get canned tomato sauce and if you’re willing to
drive downtown, there’s a place that sells canned diced tomatoes. That same
place has started to carry a few kinds of potato chips as well. Our store
downstairs almost always has peanut butter and there’s a store down the street
that has pickles. The thing is, you just never know what items the store will
have so it’s really difficult to plan in advance. Oh and all those imported
items are super expensive. I was at an import store downtown last week that had
a single can of blueberries – you can’t buy fresh blueberries in this country
because they don’t grow them – and it was $13 for the single can! Can you
imagine paying $13 for a can of blueberries?!?!
Needless to say, there are a lot of food items we’ve just
learned to live without.
That’s why now when we go to a store and we see an item that
we’ve not seen in over two years since we were last in America almost, we get
so excited.
And that’s the main point of this story.
Last week, I stopped in the import grocery store and they
had real lettuce. Can you feel how excited I was?
I love all kinds of salads, love them! But here we just
can’t get good lettuce. Every now and then we’ll get this small viney looking
leaf thing that they call lettuce, but it’s just not the same. And we have to
go through like five stages of cleaning raw vegetables here because of the
water situation, etc. Can I just simplify by saying it’s a real pain?
That’s why when I saw this imported lettuce I got sooooo
excited. I was singing in the store, making up my own words to a song, “They’ve
got lettuce, oh yes they do. I’m gonna eat a salad. How ‘bout you?”
Later that night we went out to a restaurant to celebrate a
friend’s birthday and then the next morning we had to go downtown to take Zoë
to the orthodontist, but after that, I planned to come home and make myself a
big salad. I think I may have even dreamed about eating salad the night before.
Is that sad or what?!?
Finally we got home that day and I started preparing my salad.
I had to make some ranch dressing from scratch of course, but it was so worth
it. I just knew this was going to be awesome.
When I finally had everything ready, I noticed in my
dressing recipe it said it was best to let the dressing sit in the fridge for
30 minutes to set up before eating, so again I waited.
I was dancing around the house. So happy and all for a
salad. Silly, huh?
Well, the time finally came and I prepared my big bowl and
sat down to eat. I got that first big bite, put it in my mouth and….
…immediately spit it back out.
Yuck!
It was disgusting!
“CJ come try this!” I screamed from the other room.
He came and took a bite.
“That’s not lettuce,” he replied nonchalantly before the
snicker appeared on his face.
“Wh-what is that?!?” I demanded.
“Tastes like some funky kind of cabbage,” he said, barely
able to control his laughter.
I was just completely deflated.
Over lettuce.
Or cabbage or whatever it was.
I’m sure if my grandmother would’ve been here, she probably
would’ve made something amazing with that “lettuce” but I just tossed it in the
garbage.
I have really enjoyed having more time to cook and I love
trying out new recipes. I especially love the smiles on my girls faces when I
am able to make something that they say “is as good as Granny makes!”
As for tonight, I’m making meatloaf, mashed potatoes and
steamed broccoli. I already went to the store and bought the ingredients and
the beef. Well, at least I think it’s beef…. J
you can never be too sure, huh?
The next time you walk into your local grocery store and
you’re surrounded by colorful boxes of cereal and aisles full of delicious
breads and cheese of every kind to be found in the dairy section, I want you to
think of those living around the world who don’t have those same options and
say a little prayer.
Surely heaven will be a place, not just of milk and honey,
but of bright green salads and ranch dressing!
